Now You Can Finally Share ICloud Photo Albums With Android and Windows Users.
During its WWDC 2027 presentation, Apple announced expanded functionality for iCloud Shared Albums. This feature will now be supported on Android and Windows, which was previously unavailable. This means that Android and Windows users will be able to add photos to iCloud Shared Albums starting with the release of iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate this fall.
This puts Apple’s iCloud Photos on par with other photo-sharing services like Google Photos, allowing anyone to easily view and add photos. After completing an event or returning from a trip, you can create a shared album and allow people outside the Apple ecosystem to join it. Until now, Android users haven’t been able to view or join shared albums, but the iCloud for Windows app does offer limited support for viewing shared albums . After enabling iCloud Photos in the iCloud for Windows app, you’ll also see the option to enable shared albums. When you enable iCloud shared albums, the app allows you to view shared albums you have access to. On Android, the iCloud shared albums web link allows you to view albums in a browser.
Currently, there’s a limitation: you can’t add Windows or Android users to Shared Albums—this will soon change with the release of iOS 27 and macOS 27. I think this will be a game-changer, and perhaps make me consider using iCloud Shared Albums, which I usually ignore. It will be interesting to see how Apple implements this feature and how user-friendly it is.
I’d also be interested to learn more about how the system handles iCloud storage. If it uses the storage of the user who created the album, this could prevent any issues related to running out of the paltry 5GB of free iCloud storage. This is one of the lowest free cloud storage tiers offered by anyone in the industry, and it hasn’t increased in over a decade.